It’s good to be the King, er Software Developer

At a Sapphire panel yesterday Dr. Michio Kaku, the renowned futurist and physicist commented “the H1-B visa is the genius visa”. In an academic setting that translates to foreign students doing advanced degrees in advanced sciences, but this was an IT audience where H1-B is an emotional, even dirty, term. Yet the comment drew the most cheers from the audience. What’s going on here?

In the evening, SAP organized a “demo jam” where 12 teams of developers presented their version of applications for its new HANA, in-memory analytical appliance. The UI was amateurish in many cases, the accents even more difficult to follow as the teams with Germans, Chinese, Indians and even the Americans rushed through their 6 minutes of fame. But the imagination was vivid – an application allowed for validating personal health profile by scanning the bar code of food items which validates against likely allergies associated with its ingredients; several applied complex supply chain constraints. And the pride and confidence in each team was palpable. What’s going on here?

What’s going on is explained by Michael Cote – it’s a great time to be a developer.

I interviewed him for my next book, The Technology Switchhitter which is showing industry after industry embedding software (and sensors and satellite and other tech) into their next-gen products and services. The other part of the book looks at all the software that is going into all the fascinating consumer tech and the massive application/gaming ecosystems around Apple, Google, amazon, Facebook and others.

Here at Sapphire, you have legacy and future software methods – waterfall and agile. You have enhancements to decades old R/3 code and HANA.

Look at the career opportunities. Work with Cobol – or Ruby. Develop UIs for a variety of devices, surface computers, 3D displays. Work for a corporation in its next-gen product engineering group. Work for IT supporting back office systems like SAP. Work for a department implementing a cloud solution. Work for SAP. Work for a SAP outsourcing partner. Or become an entrepreneur in one of the ecosystems. Hey, Google just raised the stakes at I/O last week – it will let you keep 95% of revenues from Chrome ecosystem applications.

Yes, it’s good to be King. And of course, we can afford to be gracious to Dr. Kaku.

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It’s good to be the King, er Software Developer

At a Sapphire panel yesterday Dr. Michio Kaku, the renowned futurist and physicist commented “the H1-B visa is the genius visa”. In an academic setting that translates to foreign students doing advanced degrees in advanced sciences, but this was an IT audience where H1-B is an emotional, even dirty, term. Yet the comment drew the most cheers from the audience. What’s going on here?

In the evening, SAP organized a “demo jam” where 12 teams of developers presented their version of applications for its new HANA, in-memory analytical appliance. The UI was amateurish in many cases, the accents even more difficult to follow as the teams with Germans, Chinese, Indians and even the Americans rushed through their 6 minutes of fame. But the imagination was vivid – an application allowed for validating personal health profile by scanning the bar code of food items which validates against likely allergies associated with its ingredients; several applied complex supply chain constraints. And the pride and confidence in each team was palpable. What’s going on here?

What’s going on is explained by Michael Cote – it’s a great time to be a developer.

I interviewed him for my next book, The Technology Switchhitter which is showing industry after industry embedding software (and sensors and satellite and other tech) into their next-gen products and services. The other part of the book looks at all the software that is going into all the fascinating consumer tech and the massive application/gaming ecosystems around Apple, Google, amazon, Facebook and others.

Here at Sapphire, you have legacy and future software methods – waterfall and agile. You have enhancements to decades old R/3 code and HANA.

Look at the career opportunities. Work with Cobol – or Ruby. Develop UIs for a variety of devices, surface computers, 3D displays. Work for a corporation in its next-gen product engineering group. Work for IT supporting back office systems like SAP. Work for a department implementing a cloud solution. Work for SAP. Work for a SAP outsourcing partner. Or become an entrepreneur in one of the ecosystems. Hey, Google just raised the stakes at I/O last week – it will let you keep 95% of revenues from Chrome ecosystem applications.

Yes, it’s good to be King. And of course, we can afford to be gracious to Dr. Kaku.